signed “Ad. Schreyer”; titled on a plaque
Provenance: Sotheby’s, New York, May 29, 1980 (lot 181)
Adolf Schreyer was born in Frankfurt, where he received his artistic training at the Stadel School (under Jakob Becker and Johann David Passavant); he expanded his artistic education in Stuttgart, Munich and Paris. He is associated with the German Romanticism movement and the Dusseldorf School of Painting (having studied at the Dusseldorf Academy – now the Staatliche Kunstakademie Dusseldorf – under Wilhelm von Schadow).
As part of his training, Schreyer studied equine anatomy, which helped to foster his confidence and skill in the treatment of this subject matter. Schreyer is particularly esteemed as a painter of horses and peasant life and, further, as a painter of Bedouin scenes, having developed a familiarity with the culture while travelling as a war artist in Northern Africa.
Schreyer’s powerful and dramatic compositions are exemplified by this work, in which the tension of the scene, with the horse team pulling and rearing in response to the menacing wolves, is technically mirrored through vigourous brushwork and the atmospheric tone of the painting.
Adolf Schreyer’s work can be found in many public collections including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Musee de Luxembourg, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt.
